Like my list of media startups in India that raised funding in 2014, here’s the list for 2015. The list is a little bigger for 2015, which is a good thing. The current year is likely to be better with new funds like the Independent and Public-Spirited (IPS) Media Foundation and Hindustan Times Accelerator supporting journalism related ideas. Photo Credit: Rakesh. TheNewsMinute The company started by journalist Chitra Subramaniam Duella (of the Bofors scandal fame) and Dhanya Rajendran (Ex-Times Now) has raised close to Rs 4 cr from Raghav Bahl’s Quintillion Media. The news site focusses on…

I tend to group new media companies in India into a few buckets. There are aggregators. And then there are brands. You can slice them further by the type of content they carry or their business model. Here’s a quick list of such companies that I put together. I’ve also pieced together some information about what they do or how they make money for those who are interested. Overall, the trend seems to be that aggregators work on the traditional cost per click model. Brands seem to be liking native advertising (see ScoopWhoop’s model below). Events have also emerged as a…

Earlier this month, business daily Mint had an interesting interview with Dominic Proctor, president, GroupM Global. The company buys over $100 Bn worth of media world wide. That’s 31% of media spend worldwide. It buys nearly 43% of India’s ad spend. Here are some excerpts from the interview. Which media—television, print, digital—is getting the largest revenue share globally? It varies enormously. In some countries like the UK and Sweden, digital is the biggest media type and Google is the biggest media owner. So that is around 50% market share. In India, digital is more like 10%. Obviously, it is a…

Bangalore based new media company Yourstory raised funds earlier this month. This year so far, we’ve seen a handful of investments into new media. In July 2015, Newsinshorts raised $20 mn from Tiger Global, the New York based firm which has backed the likes of Flipkart. In February, NewsHunt (now DailyHunt), raised $40.5 mn from Falcon Edge Capital and existing investors such as Matrix Partners and Sequoia Capital. A bunch of other new media startups in India had raised money in 2014 as well. Among these, YourStory stands out because it creates its own content while DailyHunt or Newsinshorts are content aggregators….

[Note: Last month, Medianama, a website for news and analysis on the digital ecosystem in India turned 7 years old. Nikhil, who runs the company wrote an insightful post on the things he has learned. I asked him if we could re-post it here for those who’d like to do a media startup of their own and he agreed. It’s a long post but worth reading in full if you are running/ planning to run a media startup in India. So here goes] MediaNama turns seven today, and our seventh year has possibly been the most important in our history: the…

Delhi headquartered HT Media Ltd which publishes The Hindustan Times will launch an accelerator for media and ad:tech companies in partnership with North Base Media, VCCircle reports. I spoke to someone earlier this week who will be involved in the process. The company is still ironing out the details. Former WaPo editor Marcus Brauchli founded North Base Media. HT is said to have sent out invites for a press conference to announce the launch this Friday. Update: More details from the press conference. The accelerator will be launched as a 50:50 joint venture to invite ideas from entrepreneurs. Seven ideas focused…

Former editor of The Hindu, Siddharth Varadarajan is planning to launch a new news website called The Wire. Veradarajan is the latest to join ranks with Indian media veterans like Shekhar Gupta, Raghav Bahl and Barkha Dutt to launch new media ventures recently. Varadarajan’s startup has tied up with news agencies for content and wants to raise Rs 10-12 cr in the next six months, reports Mint. He will team up with Sidharth Bhatia, an Asian Age columnist and dramatist Girish Karnad’s son Raghu Karnad to launch the site. He told Mint: We want to build a platform for independent journalism….

The same day Raghav Bahl’s Quintillion media launched its website The Quint, former Forbes India editors Indrajit Gupta & Charles Assisi launched their own website FoundingFuel. Ah..another site! Not really. The site has some of the best writers on business and technology. Rohin (ex-forbes) & Ramnath (ex-forbes) and a few others have started writing for the site. There are a whole bunch of contributors as well. Assisi has had a long stint in journalism and that probably makes it easy for him to fire up great pieces like this: Ankit Fadia Revealed. I’m so looking forward to reading them. So another site with great writers…

Media conglomerate News Corp is acquiring VCCircle Network, which includes web properties VCCircle, Techcircle, subscription based VCCEdge, VCCircle Training and its conference business. The company did not disclose size of the deal but said that it’s expected to close in March. News Corp Chief Executive Robert Thomson said This significant investment is a sign of our faith in India’s future and our enthusiasm for working with and building up emerging talents in the country,” said . “India is an increasingly meaningful part of our portfolio, which is itself increasingly digital and global. Noida based VCCircle was founded by Sahad PV…

Advertising media company GroupM released its annual outlook for the industry earlier this month. Here are some key numbers. Total money that will be spent on advertising globally: $513 billion Global Media Spend Forecast , GroupM Here’s a look at how advertising has grown in India And here’s how much advertising money each medium attracted in 2015 in India Source: GroupM & Medianama.